


Divergence

by mylordshesacactus



Category: Star Wars Legends: Knights of the Old Republic
Genre: Cognizant Revan, F/F, Gen, Lightside Revan
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-21
Updated: 2017-09-21
Packaged: 2019-01-03 21:33:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 12,243
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12155244
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mylordshesacactus/pseuds/mylordshesacactus
Summary: In another world, another life, the moment of hesitation goes no further. Bastila Shan, consumed by fear, raised from birth to place utter faith in the Council’s judgement, keeps her silence.Lie feeds upon half-truth upon lie and each careful sidestep only adds fuel to the smoldering, bitter contempt. Shown no honesty, Revan offers none. Secrets and fears are entrusted to a woman with no reason to treat them as anything but weapons, twisted to pierce the hearts of those who pressed them into her hands. The last hope of the Jedi, used and discarded one too many times, kneels on bloodstained marble at her feet. The once breaker of chains, turned in rage to bind the galaxy, returns. The Dark Lord rises from fury and flame and it is as inevitable as the death of stars.In another world, another life, the Republic falls.This is not that story.





	Divergence

**Author's Note:**

> Get ready, 'cause you're gonna laugh:
> 
> This was supposed to be a quick, short project, just to illustrate the basic progression of the only version of a lightside Revan that is at all satisfying to me. You may laugh now.
> 
> Anyway, here it is! I hope y'all think it's okay.

This is how it begins:

The Force is burning in her blood, a violet blade sings through the air, and the half-trained padawan with the golden lightsaber is an afterthought. Battle meditation is a parlor trick and the Jedi are fools to have brought her here, to the center of Revan’s power, where there is no chance of finding enough time and safety to use her little gimmick.

The padawan shouts defiance, braces herself poorly, brings her blade up in a determined but technically flawed defensive guard. _You seal your death with that,_ Revan thinks as she beheads a final Jedi warrior with an offhand flourish. Pure defense against a superior opponent is a losing strategy.

Malak has always felt a dark envy for Bastila Shan, a weakling’s grasping desire for any hint of power he himself lacks. Revan has never had any interest in the girl except to acknowledge the advantage of eliminating her from the Republic’s arsenal. But she’s bold, Revan will give her that. There is a core of steel there, defiance and angry fire in her veins that the Jedi have not been able to snuff out. A fool, but a brave one; and it is not her fault that her masters have sent her to die.

It earns a certain measure of respect. A quick death at least, then, for the Last Hope of the Republic.

Or perhaps Malak was right after all. Shan’s emotions rage at the dark storm around her, burn brighter and wilder than any Jedi should be able to bear. She would make a better Sith. And Malak is, after all, her apprentice. If Revan can finally demonstrate to him that mindless destruction of an enemy is not always the only way, in a way that lets him believe it was his idea...

There is a warning. Malak, impulsive shortsighted fool as he is, has still fought at her side for too many years to prevent that.

A bolt of awareness, of sharp focus. Some faint, corrupt remnant of the friendship they once shared tugs at the back of her mind before snapping forever—plucked one last time like a corroded harpstring, and she _knows._

This is how it begins: A flash of light, the terrible crunch of bone, and nothing.

* * *

She wakes to the sound of sirens and cannonfire.

For a long time, long enough to cause the Lord of the Sith true fear, her vision is a blank white field. Her mind feels...frail. Bruised and battered. It too is nothing but empty whiteness, like fog in bright light; shifting and impossible to grasp, with no landmarks.

Revan forces herself to close her eyes, to breathe. When she opens them again, the terrible blankness is already fading. Memories, confused and blurry but reassuringly solid, have begun filtering into place. The Force surges under her skin and grounds her. Her head swims as she sits up, but it’s manageable.

The door opens before she can even begin to take stock of the situation, and even through her disorientation, Revan’s analytical mind snaps into hyperdrive.

_Republic soldier. Alone, no visible backup. Empty space outside the window; starship or space station. Sith facility, or Republic? Realistic possibility that this is a Republic assassination attempt, but no apparent hostile intent from the soldier. No restraints on the bed, suggests friendly custody—Sith facility then, the Republic would never leave Darth Revan at liberty even unconscious. A schism in the ranks? The Sith follow strength and skill and Malak’s coup involved neither, perhaps a splinter faction remembers their true mistress…_

And then her visitor speaks, and Revan is reminded of the dangers of making assumptions.

* * *

Trask Ulgo introduces himself as her “bunkmate from another shift” and Revan restrains the urge to laugh.

She lets the man talk, and plays along; nodding at appropriate moments and making nonverbal noises of understanding and agreement. She does not mention his Sith dossier, or ask how stupid the Republic thinks she is.

Trask Ulgo is one of the best agents Republic Intelligence has. Unlike a lot of the “best the Republic has to offer,” he’s _good,_ too. Even his presence in the Force almost manages to feel earnest and forthright. A skill possessed by all the greatest liars in the galaxy: they can make _themselves_ all but believe their story.

He’s not as good as he could be, however. He’s a little too insistent, a little too pointed and just a bit too _thorough_ in his explanations of how and why Revan came to be there. If she truly was...whatever stranger’s name he’d applied to her, she can’t recall...there would have been no need to inform her of the fact. And he can’t quite control the hard, focused look he keeps throwing her, watching for any sign of doubt or denial of his words.

Testing the programming, Revan realizes. She’s a better liar than Ulgo; the rush of furious understanding doesn’t so much as flicker in her eyes.

No hostile intent indeed.

She’ll have to kill this one, eventually. He knows too much. For now, she can make use of a competent blaster hand until they’ve gotten off this ship.

Ulgo knows his trade; he’s blustering and pushing her to hurry, giving what he believes is a confused and brainwashed prisoner no time to ask questions or think critically about his statements. There’s a blaster waiting for her on the equipment rack. The smart thing, the savvy thing to do would be to take it. It would go a long way toward reassuring her handler that her reprogramming has taken hold and she truly believes she’s some kind of…smuggler?

But it’s just occurred to her, as she turns the situation over in her mind, that if the Republic wanted her new identity to be Force-sensitive they could just as easily have included that in her false backstory.

They’ve tried to make her forget her birthright. They’ve tried to cut her off from the Force, and that, she cannot forgive.

She tests the weight and balance of a poorly-made vibroblade, and determines that it will have to do until she can find a lightsaber. Trask Ulgo controls his expression and emotions perfectly, but Revan can feel him making a mental note of her choice.

Good.

* * *

She will say this for Carth Onasi: He is honest to a fault, and he takes his responsibilities seriously.

Revan is cautious, in the beginning. She is alone and still suffering the aftereffects of head trauma and whatever the Jedi have done to her. The revelation of Jedi involvement had actually come close to being frightening; drugs wear off, Republic conditioning is a joke, but the Force, as Carth is friendly enough to remind her, can shred a mind. Her greatest asset at the moment is that they believe it worked. She will not show her hand first.

So she uses caution. She thinks at first that Carth Onasi, war hero of the Republic and her terribly convenient only ally, must surely be aware of the nature of his...guest. He nearly confirms her suspicions. He’s on first-name terms with Bastila Shan. She asks for the date and he responds only with how long she’s been unconscious. He looks at her sadly and talks about the terrible effects of the Force. Like Ulgo, he brings up her false identity’s crew dossier.

Someone on the Jedi Council, she thinks darkly, has a sense of humor. She can’t imagine who thought it would be _funny_ to list her skill with languages on a fictional resume. Part of her wonders if they included Ancient Rakatan.

The rest of her wonders how many pieces she’ll leave them in when she finds them.

Unlike Ulgo, Carth is not a practiced liar. Revan can tell the difference; his earnestness is actually painful. For a moment as they talk his presence in the Force is so steady, so honest, that he almost feels like a Jedi. The hard knot of violent, carefully suppressed emotion at his core is what sells it, frankly.

Malak never had a sense of humor. Revan’s always called it his greatest weakness. HK-47 agreed with her, because HK is a good droid. She hopes he has the sense to lie low until she’s gotten her wayward apprentice under control; Malak would like nothing better than to use him for target practice.

Revan, on the other hand, has always been able to appreciate a good bit of cosmic irony.

“Definitely,” she says, in a voice that very nearly matches Carth’s for sheer innocent determination. “Let’s go rescue Bastila.”

* * *

This is what Revan learns over the course of the next three days:

Zaalbar’s loyalty is easily won, but not easily broken. He will always, in the end, acquiesce to Mission. He will fight in self-defense but has a strange and un-Wookiee-like aversion to violence. He places his honor far too easily in another's hands, as if dropping a heavy burden from his shoulders. 

Mission has been alone too long. She forms lasting impressions, both positive and negative, quickly. On a deep, fundamental level, Mission is scared. She hates Carth’s hovering, but does not resent Revan’s protection so long as she is never spoken down to. Her loyalty can be easily swayed by preying on her insecurities.

Carth is no Jedi. His anger flares easily, he makes few enough justifications for his outbursts. He heard Revan on the comms for years, and while he may not realize it, on some level he recognizes her voice. But he cannot lie to save his life. Carth is ignorant of her true identity.

Bastila is not.

* * *

Revan stands by her first impression: Bastila Shan is a _terrible_ Jedi.

The girl spits fire as her stolen vibrostaff whips through the air. The Force boils with fury and fear, swirling around her like a hurricane. Arcs of blood whiplash through the air in her wake and Bastila’s exhilaration is palpable. It is so _familiar_ that Revan laughs, casting the girl a loth-wolf grin that is not returned.

Bastila whirls and sweeps the vibrostaff above her head before the Vulkars’ bodies are even finished hitting the floor, grey eyes snapping in the dim light as she prepares to face off against Revan as well, and then—

It’s quick, barely more than a heartbeat before Bastila controls herself, but it’s enough. Her defenses are down, eroded by the drugs and so long under the effects of a neural collar. Her eyes widen in shock, and there is a spike of alarm and recognition in the Force.

“You’re—!”

Revan’s name dances on the girl’s tongue, hangs between them in the air for a split second.

“...f-from the Endar Spire,” Bastila corrects hastily, and Revan lifts an eyebrow. Yes, it’s imperative for the moment that she let the Jedi believe their little mind-rape trick worked; but she sees no reason to work harder at the deception than her would-be captor. Let Bastila wonder.

“I’m here to rescue you,” she says.

* * *

Revan is not surprised to find she likes the girl.

Bastila steals sidelong glances and, when called on it, flusters easily. Revan laughs and moves on. It’s very easy, playing the part of a spacer. At times she thinks even the girl who kidnapped her forgets who she’s speaking to.

But some things cannot be forgotten. They fight their way off Taris side by side—Bastila moves at Revan’s right hand like she was born to be there. And in the Force, Revan can feel a thrill of awe and recognition shiver between them.

She takes advantage of the moment. Glances over. Smirks.

Bastila flushes and looks away, determinedly focusing on slicing a terminal.

Like a schoolgirl with a crush. _That,_ the Lord of the Sith can use.

* * *

Revan has always known this about the Jedi: They are terribly willing to believe their decisions were entirely correct.

It takes all her force of will to keep her mental shields from wavering, to cool her emotions, to avoid even twitching toward the place a lightsaber should be as Vrook looks down his nose and eyes her with cold suspicion. As if anger in her place would be unjustified. As if he has any right to expect her willing obedience now, after the violation he attempted.

They give her a kyber crystal. _Give_ it, like a trinket cast off to a child. The crystal functions perfectly adequately, but it is cold and silent. It doesn’t sing to her in the Force like her own, because it was never meant for her.

Have the Jedi become so stagnant, she wonders. Have they truly forgotten the joy and rightness of a Force-found crystal, warm and calling out to its true mistress? Malak has. A stolen Sith crystal, bled and ruined, has never held any appeal for Revan. Her own violet blade was a symbol of that superiority, proof that her power was _her own,_ not merely wrested by force from the hands of others.

Even she doubts the Jedi have truly become so numb. The silent crystal is merely one more way to deny her a birthright. If she opened herself to the Force, called to her true second half...why, she thinks with a cold smile. If that happened, she might remember who she is. What a terrible thing _that_ would be.

Her “training” in the Force is worse. It takes more concentration to force a datapad to wobble uncertainly than it does to simply lift it; feigning unfamiliarity with the Force is _painful._ It leaps eagerly to assist her, it wants to be used, wants to flow freely, but for weeks she cannot allow it.

Revan knows this about the Jedi as well: They have always required her to be less than what she is.

* * *

Juhani is the beginning and the end.

Revan grinds her teeth at the _condescension,_ the blatant testing that she’s not meant to recognize for what it is. The perfect chance to see if their pet Sith Lord is broken enough to harness, if she will kill her own for their sake. But she grows closer every day to having the Jedi support her search for the Star Forge, and the _irony_ of that is enough to make patience worth it.

She expects a handful of angry weaklings, along Malak’s build; thugs who think they’re powerful because they can throw lightning around and terrorize a handful of scattered villages. It wouldn’t be the first time she crushed that kind of fool. What she finds instead makes her unspeakably grateful that neither Canderous nor Mission is Force-sensitive.

She could not have controlled the black shockwave of rage and hatred that ripples across the grasslands if her life and empire depended on it.

The Jedi will die. She will make sure of it. And she will even slaughter the Council quickly, because taking her time would not be enough to make up for this. She would cheapen this sheer depth of _suffering_ by trying to match it with simple torture. It would not be enough. A slow death is too good for anyone capable of this much cruelty while calling themselves paragons of the light.

 _A dark perversion,_ they had said. An outside force attacking a pure and sacred Jedi space. A vicious, corrupting presence.

Revan kneels and places a hand on the ground, and the Force screams: _She is in pain._

It will be months before she recognizes it, but in that moment, the Revanchist rears her head for the first time in years.

Because the Force, under its wild anger, under the grasslands themselves curling around Juhani in a desperate attempt to shield her from her own agony, whispers something as well. And for the first time in a long time, Revan hears it.

 _Help her,_ it breathes. _No one else will._

* * *

When the Council finally grants their gracious _permission_ to _investigate_ the Rakatan temple, Bastila follows Revan’s lead.

It takes the better part of an hour to realize that the girl doesn’t know the way. Revan can’t decide whether that should be met with pity or disdain. It’s not difficult to check a map, and while the artifact’s presence is quiet in the Force, it’s still _there._ No Jedi of her age should be completely unable to follow it.

But it’s...sad, as well. The ruins are barely two hours’ walk from the enclave where Bastila Shan has lived her entire life. The grasslands are dry, ugly, the thin soil packed hard enough to hurt underfoot; the blandness of Dantooine is almost offensive. And yet more than once, despite her wariness, Revan catches the girl closing her eyes and visibly reveling in the open air, the pathetic scraps of wind. She looks at their surroundings like she’s drinking in the glorious beauty of nature.

They leap with the Force up and onto a plateau, rather than hike all the way around it. Along their bond she feels a tiny thrill of rebellion. Bastila, whatever she might tell herself, relishes being away from the Jedi and their prying, judgemental eyes. Her movements are easier, her power flows more smoothly.

Revan knows the feeling.

* * *

The temple remembers her.

Or rather, it remembers _them._ Revan, calm and cold, the eye of the hurricane as fear and uncertainty swirl against her. A slim palm, marred by saber callouses, pressed against stone orders of magnitude more ancient than the cliff faces surrounding them. Letting the power of this place, the temple, the secrets it holds, the blood and power it has seen, rush into her before taking command of that raw energy and turning it back to break the seals.

And the weaker presence beside her, nervous and uncertain, not quite committed. Waiting for Revan’s lead. Only here, in this place, standing on the precipice of greatness, because they followed in her wake.

The temple knows Revan, and it knows her apprentice.

* * *

The sun is already beginning to set by the time they leave the temple.

The heavy doors shudder and grind closed behind them, and Bastila lets out a long breath. Her robes are torn, the edges singed; she’s exhausted. And all they have to show for it is a holocron, warm in Revan’s hand, and the precious datafiles it contains.

Bastila has not thought to ask how Revan knew she would need a blank holocron.

The girl is all but tripping over herself, mind racing and emotions in shambles as she tries to process what she’s learned; Revan is patient with her. She remembers the awe and the excitement all too well. Of course, Bastila’s eagerness was entirely focused on bringing their information back to the Council, hoping for praise she will never receive. Like a neglected pet.

But her excitement is dulled now, with the initial rush wearing off. Her mind is weary, and the prospect of returning to the Council has neither of them feeling eager to hurry back.

Through the soupy clouds, a few stars glitter above them. And Revan, suddenly, remembers the whisper in the Force she’d felt earlier of a natural crystal cave. Somewhere in the earth is a violet crystal that longs to be in her hand. She had regretfully written it off as too great a risk to claim, but she can taste its resonance out on the grasslands, familiar and clean, like a memory.

And Bastila has hardly stepped beyond the Enclave’s walls. True beauty is something that has been denied her.

She smiles and offers the girl a hand. Something shivers pleasantly in Bastila's core at their touch; Revan smiles, enigmatic, betraying nothing.

“Come with me,” she murmurs. “I want to show you something.”

* * *

 She knows they can sense her hatred.

Icy blackness like the depths of space coils around the enclave. It pools around the Council's feet, stirring like mist, clinging like oil. Revan at its heart is very still, very calm, and very quiet. The picture, in fact, of an innocently brainwashed young Jedi trainee, submitting to the Council's greater wisdom.

The Council, unable to tell for certain the source of the cold rage, tries valiantly to hide their unease. Revan does not smile. Her own control and mental shields have always been more than a match for fools like Vandar. Their discomfort brings just enough satisfaction to maintain her composure; if her anger spikes now, even these poor excuses for Jedi are bound to notice. Certainly she could slaughter her way off the planet, but it would be inconvenient and she has sacrificed too much in the interest of avoiding a full-scale Republic manhunt to risk that solely for catharsis.

"Juhani has been saved," the Council says, dripping with a patronizing imitation of compassion. "But you must not forget what happened to her."

Revan's expression does not change. Her shields, cool and solid, do not waver.

"Believe me, Masters," she says softly. "I won't."

* * *

HK doesn’t recognize her.

That stings far more than Malak’s betrayal. A woman should always be able to count on her sadistic and profoundly mentally unstable assassin droid.

* * *

Compared to the vast, empty nothingness of Dantooine, Anchorhead Spaceport is a bustling metropolis.

Revan, freed from the wary eyes of the Jedi at last, stands in the blinding sun and breathes.

 _Watch and learn,_ she thinks as she begins to weave a web of alliances. By the end of the day she is an honorable liberator to the Jawas, an oathkeeper among the Sand People—a rarer accolade than anyone but HK realizes. The human occupiers know better now than to bullrush or cheat her. Every living thing in her wake remembers her as a better alternative to the status quo. They will not forget that, when she returns to claim the world.

_This is how you build an empire._

* * *

Bastila’s resentment clings to her like decon foam as she stands laser-straight across from her mother.

It’s giving Revan a headache.

She's covered in sand, near snowblind from the glare off the desert, and quite frankly fed up with wasting her time being jumped by mercenaries and Malak's cut-rate assassins. At least the useless fools he's siccing on her show the ruse of her death is working, but the insult is _almost_ enough to make secrecy no longer worth it. Her instinct, from what little she’s seen of Helena Shan, is to encourage Bastila’s irritation and be done with this. Jedi “selflessness” is so often insultingly performative; Juhani, who still jumps when addressed suddenly and punctuates sentences with self-flagellation, is living proof of the harm their blasted philosophy does to innocents. It would be easier to convince water to flow up than to explain to a Jedi that some things are worth being angry over.

But she hesitates, because Bastila’s anger is...corrupted. Tangled in painful snarls in her chest, caught in sharp hooks of regret and grief, longing, exhaustion.

Revan tells herself that encouraging Bastila to indulge in a petty cruelty now will only serve to reinforce the idea that such actions always end in regret. Keeping the holocron will bring her no satisfaction. She tells herself that cultivating Bastila’s trust is, after all, the ultimate goal.

If she acknowledges a grudging respect for the girl, if she is aware that she does not want to cause her any more pain, fine. What of it? Darth Revan need justify herself to no one.

“Thank you,” Bastila murmurs afterward, as they make their way back to the Hawk through the rippling heat of a desert sun.

For a moment, she hovers on the edge of saying more; then she shakes her head sharply and follows Canderous up the loading ramp.

* * *

In another world, another life, the moment of hesitation goes no further. Bastila Shan, consumed by fear, raised from birth to place utter faith in the Council’s judgement, keeps her silence.

Lie feeds upon half-truth upon lie and each careful sidestep only adds fuel to the smoldering, bitter contempt. Shown no honesty, Revan offers none. Secrets and fears are entrusted to a woman with no reason to treat them as anything but weapons, twisted to pierce the hearts of those who pressed them into her hands. The last hope of the Jedi, used and discarded one too many times, kneels on bloodstained marble at her feet. The once breaker of chains, turned in rage to bind the galaxy, returns. The Dark Lord rises from fury and flame and it is as inevitable as the death of stars.

In another world, another life, the Republic falls.

This is not that story.

* * *

The Ebon Hawk has been in hyperspace for approximately seven standard hours when there is a hesitant knock on the doorframe.

By now, Revan is used to the mental stutter as Bastila takes a moment to remember the false name. The little Jedi heroically soldiers past it.

“I would appreciate a moment of your time,” she says, as close to a request as Bastila Shan is probably capable of getting. “There is...something you should know.”

Is there really.

Revan raises an eyebrow in as blandly friendly a manner as she can, sets her datapad aside. The Ebon Hawk’s finances could be in much worse straits, but they’re not exactly swimming in credits if they’re going to be properly equipping the crew. HK has been so neglected it makes her want to cry; the poor droid had been kitted out with a complete set of top-of-the-line composite plating and the best weapons Mandalorian engineering could produce not six months ago. And Mission needs proper armor and a decent rifle; just like the Jedi to overlook that kind of thing…

But of course she _always_ has time for a friendly chat with her kidnapper.

“By all means.” She smiles and gestures to the place beside her on the bed, which Bastila accepts, still tense.

“Mission,” Bastila says after a moment. “Could you give us the room, please?”

There’s a pause, then an exasperated sigh. Revan’s not certain if it’s her own Force-sensitivity or simply something inherent in teenagers that allows her to actually hear Mission rolling her eyes in the next bunk.

“No problem, _Master Jedi,”_ she says, rolling out of bed and snagging the pazzak deck as she stands. “It’s not like I _live_ here or anything.”

Revan’s lips twitch. “Thank you, Mission.”

“Yeah, yeah…”

The hatch hisses closed at her back.

Bastila’s shoulders tense even more. For several long moments she sits ramrod-straight on the edge of the bunk, hands frozen flat on her thighs. Revan does not help her.

Finally, Bastila takes a shuddering breath and leans forward, burying her head in her hands.

“I don’t know how to begin,” she says, irritation thick in her voice. “I shouldn’t be saying this at all—or rather, I _should,_ it, it has to be said, but...this should not be so _difficult!_ I’m afraid I have not been entirely honest with you. I had my reasons, the Council ordered—but—no. I need...There is something you need to know.”

“You mentioned,” says Revan.

Somehow, that actually seems to calm her a bit. “Yes,” Bastila says. She drops her hands from her face, bracing her elbows on her knees and staring blankly at the opposite wall. “Or perhaps...perhaps that’s not the full truth. There is something I need to _tell_ you.” Her voice steadies, almost a murmur; the Force, pulsing slowly around her, tinges with melancholy. “Something you ought to have been told long before now.”

Revan can’t entirely control her own surprise, spiking briefly along their bond. She doesn’t let it show on her face. Bastila Shan has not earned Revan’s making this any easier. Finally, she seems to realize that. Takes another steadying breath.

And tells her everything.

* * *

Almost everything. In the end, she can’t quite bring herself to say the words.

She doesn’t have to.

To her credit, by the time Bastila finishes her carefully dispassionate explanation of everything Revan has already guessed, her presence in the Force is remarkably centered. Padawan Shan is prepared for any reaction. Anger, horror, disbelief and denial, fear, betrayal...she is ready to let these break over her, and to accept them with grace.

What she is not prepared for is Revan’s calm non-reaction.

What she is not prepared for is this:

“I know.”

* * *

There is a long, frozen minute. Bastila recovers quickly; Revan is quicker.

“Don’t,” she says.

Her voice is steady, dangerously soft. She doesn’t break eye contact. Bastila freezes with a hand halfway to her saber hilt, and Revan’s expression stays carefully neutral.

“Pull a saber on me,” she murmurs, “And this time I _will_ kill you.”

It is not a bluff, and Bastila is smart enough not to try calling it.

“You’re...you’re Revan,” she stammers. A realization rather than a confession.

“News to you, obviously.”

“But…” Bastila swallows. Somehow she’s found a way to be paler than usual; Revan watches with clinical interest as she visibly fights the urge to lean away, or perhaps run for the door. “But the Council...”

“Your Council tried to _murder me,_ yes.” Bastila flinches, less at the words than at the way Revan’s voice hardens into what is nearly a snarl. Dark fury washes along their Force bond and crashes over her mind, a wave striking stone; Revan makes no attempt to spare her from the impact. “They underestimate my resolve. As they always have. I am no one’s slave and no one’s experiment.”

“Why are you telling me this?” she breathes, and for the first time Revan lets her lips twitch up into a wry half-smile.

“If we’re going to be working together,” she says, “It’s probably best that we’re honest with each other.”

For a moment, Bastila is mystified. Understanding jolts back down their bond like lightning as her eyes widen.

“Work—no!” And finally one of them has raised her voice. “No, I will _not._ The Star Forge, you’re looking for the Star Forge again, aren’t you? Of course, with your organic memory loss precise details like hyperspace coordinates could so easily be confused or forgotten and—no. I refuse to assist you in locating...whatever it is!”

Revan smiles blandly. “A semi-sentient ancient space station, weapons factory and shipyard of a size and complexity that modern technology is unable to even approach. A relic of the Rakatan Empire, in fact. You won’t have heard of it; I hadn’t either when I began. They knew the secret of infusing mechanical structures with the Force directly, making the structure itself faintly Force-sensitive. I intend to learn it myself someday.”

Poor Bastila is visibly struggling to keep up. “A _factory?_ Then that’s where—”

“Where the Sith fleet came from, yes, keep up. You’ll see it for yourself soon enough.”

Bastila lifts her head. “I won’t help you, Revan."

And now, this is becoming tedious.

“Then stop me,” Revan says shortly. “Kill me in my sleep. Find the Star Forge without my memories.”

Bastila has no response to that. Revan stands.

“You can go your own way and try to beat me there, but I’ll warn you now I know exactly where those star maps are hidden, and I know the safeguards I left behind. So you can leave the Star Forge in Malak’s hands, and he will destroy every planet from here to Coruscant in order to be supreme ruler of the ashes. You can leave and hand it over to me, and I will finish what I started. Or, yes, you can bite your tongue and cooperate and turn on me once you have all five star maps.” She shrugs. “It’s what I’d do.”

 _“What?_ No! That’s—Jedi don’t think that way!”

Revan gives a rough chuckle and leaves without a word.

An hour later, from Canderous’ cargo bay, she feels Bastila’s sudden flush of shame as the Jedi finally remembers that Revan can sense her thoughts.

* * *

They reach an unspoken agreement, during the three-day journey to Manaan.

Revan smiles when Bastila inches uncertainly into the common area. Her feet are slung irreverently on the table and she makes no move toward the violet lightsaber at her hip. She waves Bastila over, and Canderous deals her into the pazaak game.

Revan makes no threats toward Bastila or any of the crew. Neither of them speaks of what they both know, and the tension along their Force bond finally eases as the strain of deception finally disappears. There are no more headaches, fewer restless nights.

Bastila does not attempt to warn the others.

* * *

Juhani hates Manaan.

There are too many echoes, too many people, too much conflict in the Force. The salty air makes her fur sticky, and more than once Revan catches her hiding a grimace at the scent of the Selkath.

She would have sat this mission out, Revan knows, if given the choice; but Juhani cannot hide in the Ebon Hawk alone with her self-hatred forever. Revan _knows_ the power of anger that remains suppressed this long, the destructive effect of isolation. Juhani, whether she likes it or not, needs fresh air and company.

If it occurs to her, briefly, to wonder why she suddenly cares so much about Juhani’s mental well-being, she brushes the thought aside.

This is a matter of principle. Revan, from the very beginning, has set out to undo the damage done by Jedi negligence. The Council wrote this girl off as a loss—sweet, gentle, frightened, having wanted nothing in her life but to be good enough for them, they cast her out as an object lesson in failure. They believed it was inevitable that she should be consumed by her pain, and so they never bothered to teach her how to survive it.

Revan will prove them wrong. _Juhani_ will prove them wrong. She is better than the Jedi Council entire.

The Jedi have forfeited any right they had to her. Revan will never let them touch this girl again.

* * *

“What do you know about the Sith Code?” she asks Bastila.

Bastila, instinctively, looks for Juhani. The Cathar is embroiled in friendly negotiation with a merchant at the moment, safely out of earshot. Revan is leaning back carelessly against the safety wall, and Bastila takes a deep breath.

“I know I’m not interested, Revan,” she says, keeping her voice down but enunciating firmly.

Revan grins, unconcerned. “I never invited you. But you should know your enemy if you intend to defeat her. You’re terrified of the Sith, for someone who doesn’t know anything about them.”

She bristles. “I am not _afraid_ of the Sith! But I hardly know why you think I would be familiar with their creed, of all things.”

“Ignorance kills.”

This time, the statement is serious. Bastila frowns at her, but listens.

Revan closes her eyes, breathes in the salty air, the stiff breeze. Remembers the oppressive stillness of the Jedi Enclave. The way Bastila glanced around anxiously within its walls, the way she muted her voice and offered no opinions of her own. The way she’d come alive when Revan took her out on the grasslands. The wonder on her face as they climbed up through a kinrath cave and out among hundreds of glittering kyber crystals.

 _“The Force shall free me,”_ Revan murmurs, and turns to watch Bastila’s reaction. “The right to self-determination. What do the Jedi teach you about that?”

“They don’t,” she says curtly. “All that matters is the will of the Force. Personal desires are irrelevant.”

An echo of old, personal anger flares in Revan’s chest. The feeling of being strangled slowly, drowning on dry land, chastised for _overly emotional displays_ while billions died, alone in the black reaches of space. She rides it out, and lets it go.

“To a Jedi,” she responds.

* * *

She smiles grimly as their little group is ushered into the Republic interrogation room.

It’s identical to the Sith facility nearby; Revan would know. Unfortunately her regional governors are intelligent enough to change the security codes following a violent coup, or she wouldn’t have to waste her time with this.

Juhani’s ears are flat against her head, tail curled tightly around one leg. She stands as far against the back wall as possible. Juhani doesn’t like barrier cages; unsurprising. Bastila isn’t happy either, but she stands half a step behind Revan and watches her work.

It would go more smoothly if the Republic’s thug of an interrogator would stop cutting in. Revan has tried to dismiss him, but the man will not take a hint. She works around it, swallowing her irritation as the man keeps turning friendly, understanding offers of asylum into clumsy brute-force threats. Still, she manages. Interrogations are fairly universal.

Revan is acutely aware of Bastila’s distaste as she realizes that for the first time.

* * *

 Juhani has reached her limit.

The poor cathar was already twitchy and uncomfortable, and Revan is not certain at first what causes her to crack. She grows more and more irritable throughout the day, touchy and snappish. Finally Bastila makes some innocuous comment about their mission, and it pushes her patience over the edge.

“Oh, yes,” she spits, fur standing on end. Her tail lashes her shins. “The _mission_ is _terribly_ important.”

There is more venom and spite in her voice than Revan has heard even from the most bitter Sith recruits.

 _Finally,_ she thinks with a sigh of relief. If something hadn’t vented that pressure soon…

Bastila bristles at Juhani’s tone, and Juhani’s hackles go up right back. Revan is debating whether she should step in or wait until sabers are physically drawn when Juhani finally snaps. Half of her shouting is directed at Bastila, half wildly redirected at Revan; even now the girl tries to control herself, frustration only spiking as it runs against Revan’s calm encouragement.

Finally she screams her homeworld’s name, flings the death of Taris at Revan’s feet and demands an answer, an explanation. _Make it make sense,_ she begs in the Force. After all this time, a lost child’s plea. _Make the pain stop. I never asked for this. Please. I don’t understand..._

Neither of them is certain how exactly Revan ends up with an armful of sobbing Cathar. But she remembers now, the liberation of Taris, the breaking of the slave markets. However brief it might have been. If only Juhani had come to _her,_ all those years ago, she would have been...

What? She asks herself the question and feels a twinge of uncertainty. An unfamiliar sense of guilt. She would have been what? Happy? Fulfilled? Respected?

Treated with more kindness, Revan thinks. At least in the beginning, in the old days, before the Star Forge…

She sends Juhani, gently, back to the Hawk, and has Canderous meet them at the submarine, and is determined not to think about it.

* * *

Bastila is uncharacteristically silent.

They are far below the ocean’s surface. The sun has long ago stopped filtering down through the waves; only the submersible’s lights offer any visibility, and Revan has turned them off. Bright lights this deep in the ocean only attract unwanted attention.

A vivid flash of memory: Malak, screaming, as something very long and with very many rows of lamprey teeth chewed on their viewport while Revan dodged three more of them.

She navigates with the Force.

When Bastila does finally speak, it’s...hesitant. She second-guesses herself with every word. But, with the same compulsive honesty that drove her to confess to her role in the Council’s attempt on Revan’s mind, she forces the words out.

 _I am glad you are with us,_ she says. _I have come to depend on you._ Glances over. There are unspoken paragraphs in those dark grey eyes. An acknowledgement: I have not forgotten who you are. But I am grateful that you are here. Not only in combat.

Revan really has no response to that.

* * *

Alone in the dark on the ocean floor, she has entirely too much time to think.

* * *

Time works differently this far underwater.

There is no sunlight here, only the faint, blurred industrial lights of the base. No birdsong or wildlife activity to judge the passage of time; black water presses thick and silent around them. By the time Revan and her newly-rediscovered claustrophobia drag themselves out of the airlock and gasp lungfuls of processed air, even Canderous is becoming disturbed. Death and horror cling to the very durasteel in this place.

Bastila can sense only faint echoes; Revan has always had...something of a gift, for psychometry. It has served her well in ancient temples, in raids and prison breaks, over the years. Places like this, the sites of recent bloodbaths, are the price she pays for that gift.

“I’m glad that’s over,” Bastila murmurs as they pass back down the long, eerily silent corridors. Canderous grunts. He makes some comment about Jedi having no stomach for battle, but he’s too tired to put any relish in it.

Canderous seals himself in the rear transport area; Bastila, trying valiantly to keep her eyes open, curls up in the uncomfortable copilot’s chair. The chrono in the submersible lights up bright green and flashes 0400. It’s agonizingly bright, before Revan can wince and dial the settings down. She triple-checks the hatch seals; exhaustion has made her sluggish, and she won’t die crushed to death at the bottom of the ocean because she forgot to pressurize the cabin.

Headlights off, she flips the submersible to autopilot.

This, too, is how it begins:

Bastila Shan, in complete awareness that the woman beside her is the fully-cognizant Darth Revan, falls asleep against her shoulder.

* * *

Revan is...restless.

She feels off-balance, unstable. Conflicted. She doesn’t like it.

She waves aside the Czerka representative without thinking, as she strides off the Ebon Hawk. If she uses, perhaps, a little too much power nudging his mind with the Force, the oily greed she can sense from him alleviates any regret for the headache he’ll have later.

She wishes she could pretend not to know why her blood is up this way. But...well. Revan is not a fool. The greatest and last mistake every great leader in history has ever made is lying to themselves, and she will not follow them. After Manaan, she cannot deny that she no longer has her old iron certainty.

She is no longer sure she knows exactly what she wants.

So she compensates for her distraction. She takes command where she can, exercises control in little ways. A Wookiee cub is crying in a too-small cage. The lock disintegrates in a casual slash of violet, and the predator behind her eyes stops the slavers’ protests in their throats. Mission takes the cub under her wing as they walk, talking and sharing a ration bar until it laughs. A few credits passed silently to the one honest spacer in the compound is repaid by a swell of silver gratitude in the Force. Czerka’s thugs and bullyboys meet her cold gaze and haltingly agree that they should find another trade. Revan has never needed the Star Forge to change the fate of worlds.

It steadies her. She is grateful to this world, for the reminders it has given her.

She owes no one a justification. Her decisions, whatever they may be, are always and ever her own. If she wants to free slaves, she dares the universe to stop her. If she is disgusted by slimy politics, by chieftains without honor, by deals cut with soulless corporations for mere monetary gain at the price of children crying alone behind iron bars, she has every right. This is how she began.

Revan has only ever been herself.

* * *

Oh, the old man knows.

He recognized her so quickly she has to wrack her frustratingly incomplete memories trying to figure out if they might have met face to face at some point. She’s fairly certain she doesn’t remember a Jolee Bindo, but he _knows._

Smart man. She’s impressed in spite of herself.

He doesn’t say a word, either, which is interesting in itself. He knows, and she can sense that he knows, and he _knows_ she can sense that he knows.

She takes his measure as the Wookiee basket platform makes its slow and silent ascent back to the treetops. The old man’s arms are crossed. Unlike Bastila, who is braced against the basket’s edge staring out at the shifting darkness, his eyes are closed; he seems totally uninterested, though Revan suspects it’s at least partially an act. She knows he can sense her watching him.

After several long minutes, and then several more just to make her wait, his eyes open. He returns her gaze with one just as steady, and raises a single eyebrow.

Revan’s lips twitch.

All right. She likes this one, too.

* * *

Revan is not the only one who is restless.

Bastila, unfortunately, is far more willing to lie to herself.

She finds Bastila on the walkway, leaning on crossed arms against the railing. Dusk is beginning to fall on a forest already shrouded in eternal twilight. Bastila gazes, unseeing, over the forest of Kashyyyk with melancholy wrapped around her like a mist. _Brooding_ is the only appropriate description.

She takes her time approaching. Bastila doesn’t so much as look over, so Revan chooses not to acknowledge her either. She grips a sturdy support post and vaults lightly onto the rail. One leg rests on the lower rung, the other dangling carelessly into the void. She’s feeling relaxed tonight. It’s been too long since she got to bask in the satisfaction of successfully liberating a world.

It’s a long time before Bastila finally speaks.

 _“Must_ you sit so close to the edge?”

Revan fights back a smile. “Does it bother you?”

“I doubt the Council would be pleased if our last hope of defeating Malak was lost because of Darth Revan’s untimely demise in the wreckage of a collapsed balcony.” There’s no heat in Bastila’s voice, no bitten-back irritation. That alone is enough to confirm how troubled she is.

Not long ago Revan would have used this opening to mention their inevitable duel, their conflicting goals. Nothing unnerves an opponent, makes them more likely to hesitate in that moment of betrayal, than casually discussing it beforehand. Now…

Revan cedes the initiative, for once, and waits quietly until Bastila is ready to break the silence again.

“There’s something I’d like to ask you,” she says softly. “If you’ll permit it.”

Revan’s eyebrows lift. She has no easy response to that, but she inclines her head.

“I’ve watched you. You behave as one who follows the light,” and she sounds almost frustrated. And for once, finally, she lets herself question. Lets herself admit that she does not have all the answers, that there are things she does not understand. That there are things she is _allowed_ not to understand, without shame. It’s a vulnerability that Bastila Shan has never shown before, not to Revan, not like this.

“We both know who and what you are,” she says. “You have no need to act, no deception to maintain. But you act so naturally with integrity. It’s not a front, at least I don’t believe it is...Why? How is it so easy for you? For _you,_ of all people?”

Revan...tries. Tries to find words to describe how not everything can be thought of in terms of dark and light. How even those concepts are far from synonyms for the Jedi and the Sith. But it is difficult to make a Jedi understand the rule of their own conscience. Jedi don’t think that way. There is the Jedi path and there is failure to follow it, nothing more.

“You can only do what you think is right with the information you have,” she says, finally. “You accept the results of that decision, you learn from it, you do better the next time.”

Sad grey search hers. “And that’s enough for you?”

The sun sets around them as they talk. Bastila’s emotions are...different, along their bond. Shifting. She has always been a storm in a bottle, strained and tight, waves breaking against glass but never allowed to break free. That has not changed. But tonight the storm feels quieter. Not necessarily calmed; but thunder and rain viewed from inside sturdy walls, rather than the deck of a ship lost at sea.

Bastila speaks of her own temptations. Of the Council’s expectations, of her self-doubt at her failure to meet them. She speaks of anger, of passion; her voice is muted, she still speaks of them as things outside herself, but she does not deny any more than she feels them. She does not, for now, state as immutable fact that they are inherently dangerous.

She glances at Revan then, offering her doubt like a benediction, pleading for help, for guidance. For an answer, any answer.

She is so terribly afraid. And for a moment, that thick glass shell around her emotions cracks and their bare souls brush, and Revan realizes like the crash of the sea how deep Bastila’s feelings toward her truly run.

“You’re nothing like what I expected,” says Bastila. The longing, the tenderness and terror that radiate in the Force, say more than any Jedi would ever be able to put into words.

And of course Revan wasn’t what she expected. The Jedi are as much slaves to their passions as the Sith, in their own way. Revan, who is both and neither now, may very well be the only free woman she has ever met.

As for Bastila...Revan still cannot honestly say that her initial impression was wrong, only incomplete. She would not have expected this woman’s cutting humor and softness, her aside comments, her willingness to question and challenge and trust in equal measure. She would not have expected to find in an overconfident, self-righteous young padawan anyone capable of earning so much of her respect.

But she was correct in one thing: Bastila Shan will never be a Jedi.

“I think…” Bastila’s voice cracks, and she swallows. “I think I may have made a very big mistake.”

* * *

Bastila kisses her like the stars are dying.

It’s not how Revan would have kissed her. And Force, has she thought about it. As a pastime at first; it amused her, feeling Bastila’s attraction, baiting her, flirting, letting tendrils of desire twist along their bond. But she had let that little game die a long time ago.

Oh, the desire hasn’t gone. If anything she wants the girl more than ever now. But Bastila is frantic, frightened of herself and her own desire, convinced this is a line only a Sith could cross. Revan knows her too well to meet that kind of desperation with passion.

Given her own initiative Revan would have hushed her, slowed her until she stopped panicking. Would have guided her in more natural steps, a less frightening progression; drawn her close, teased her hair free of its ties, trailed kisses along her jaw...it’s not that she _planned_ it, nothing so entitled, but she has common sense.

Common sense is not Bastila’s greatest strength.

She has no interest in being quieted, not again. She has been fighting, harder even than Revan ever realized, clenching her teeth and holding her own feelings and judgement and passion at bay, and it has finally exhausted her.

In a moment of despair she realizes she can no longer hold back every emotion in her body and so she gives into them entirely, swept along past her own rationality and it’s a mistake. Revan, who knows this moment because she has lived it before, who has broken too many Jedi not to understand how it happens, could have warned her that it was a mistake, that when the flood has subsided and she can breathe again she will only be left more afraid of herself.

But it is far too late for that warning and Revan too is only human, has also wanted this for too long.

She does what she can, when Bastila has come back to herself. It’s not enough, but it never would have been. She needs time, and space, and a chance to meditate and reassure herself that the Force has not turned sour around her because she cares for another human being.

* * *

The disconnect and tension between them do ease. There is awkwardness, a mutual knowledge that they will need to talk about this again soon, but Bastila does not flee any room Revan enters anymore.

Her _fear,_ at least, is gone; she has acknowledged her passions and survived them, and knows now what loss of control feels like. By the second night she is comfortable enough to willingly sit at Revan’s side during a pazzak game, even to smile.

It would be better, Revan thinks, if this had happened _after_ they reached Korriban. They have a two-week trip in a very small freighter to look forward to right when they could most use fresh air and a few hours of real privacy; that, and something to focus on. Something to confirm that they can still function in the field together, that nothing has fundamentally changed.

A bit of action, maybe another run-in with Malak’s poor ineffective starfighter pilots, is exactly what they need.

* * *

The Force has a sick sense of humor.

* * *

T3 hums with contentment and nuzzles up against Revan’s legs. She places a hand on his chassis. You can always trust an astromech when the chips are down.

She breathes evenly, suffusing herself in the Force, letting it flow through sore muscles and ruptured blood vessels. Soothing the pain and healing the injuries, filling her with strength. Bastila, who alone has not been tortured, does her best for Carth.

Karath’s people are lucky for that, Revan thinks grimly. She likes Carth well enough, respects his loyalty and honesty if nothing else. If they’d been stupid enough to torture _Bastila_ just to taunt her, every living thing on the Leviathan would be dead by the time their master got here.

* * *

Revan would be hypocritical if she said vengeance is a distraction. She would also be stupid; desire for revenge can sharpen instincts like nothing else, shore up hesitation, override exhaustion. And Carth _deserves_ Saul Karath’s blood.

But his focus on Karath _is_ a distraction, and a welcome one. Revan never imagined she would see the day when Carth Onasi was too distracted to be suspicious.

She’ll take what she can get. This is one of Darth Revan’s most prominent command ships. She has no time to bother making up a fitting excuse for how she directs them around identical corners without pausing, how she knows the patrol routes, why she directs them unerringly toward a maintenance airlock instead of the main door she knows will be sealed.

If Carth asks, she is going to tell him the truth, and they _really_ do not have time for that at this precise moment.

* * *

For all Malak’s taunting, he is not prepared for the rumors of Jedi brainwashing to be false. He expects to find his master diminished, weakened by injuries and unable to remember her true power.

So Revan lets him see just that.

She lets her grip loosen, lets her blows come slower, more clumsily. She is still faster than him; Malak is not that much a fool, she is careful not to overplay her hand. But her footwork is less precise, she blocks less fluidly. Uses less power in her throws, does not open herself completely to the Force as she works him in circles.

Finally, he sees his opening, and she lets his brute-force wall of power knock her off her feet. Revan cries out, clutches her ribs as her lightsaber clatters across the floor, and does not rise.

It’s a feint.

For the rest of her life she will regret the strength of her own mental shields, her caution in hiding her intent from Malak. She could call her saber from the bridge if she had to, this distance is nothing; she can see the opening coming as he finally grows careless in the face of what looks like helplessness. It is so close to being over. The door is meant to be sealed.

It’s a feint. Bastila, as poor loyal Carth’s security spike finally takes hold at the sealed hatch, has no way of knowing that.

She does exactly what Revan would have done for her.

* * *

Carth sleeps with a blaster on hand now. Mission shies away from her in the mess and has taken Juhani’s place sleeping in the breakfast nook.

The others already knew. That, Revan knows and regrets, has only made the cut deeper for them both.

Or almost everyone. Juhani’s soft gasp is genuine, she did not suspect, but in a way Juhani had always recognized Revan in the Force. Zaalbar has only known since Kashyyyk; he bears her a lifedebt, and she owed him the truth about the alliance he was forging. Revan is somewhat surprised he kept her secret from Mission.

The Ebon Hawk is very quiet for the next two weeks.

There seems to be very little anyone can say.

* * *

When Revan planned this route, Korriban was meant to be a homecoming.

There were strategic concerns as well, of course. The odds of being recognized, of word reaching Malak, are exponentially higher here. She has arranged things so that exposure will not matter; by the time anyone informs her wayward apprentice that Revan is seeking the Star Forge once more, she will be at its doorstep.

But in her mind she had basked in the power of the Dark Side that envelops this world, spread her arms and released her power. Reclaimed all that is hers on a wave of blood and crackling lightning and the bent knees of the faithful.

She cannot believe she ever wanted it. There is nothing here of worth.

There are three kinds of people on Korriban. Some are swaggering bullies seeking cheap power; they can be bought for a pint of cheap ale or a few sweet words of flattery, and to a one they are profoundly stupid. Even the forceblind can sense the deadly cold of Revan’s power; Sith trainees have no excuse.

The others divide neatly down the middle. Some are mild-mannered sadists with no skills except flattery, capable of great feats of martial might provided their victims are half-starved, helpless, or cowering. The rest are of respectable enough power in the Force and even truly understand the Sith code. But their understanding is academic. They can recite and explain the code, but they study it from outside and have no true driving purpose. Power for power’s sake means nothing.

Revan has more respect for the sadists than any of the others. At least they have ambitions, some true goal they strive for.

They have to be stopped, of course, and she will sleep soundly after she does it. But _aimless_ cruelty, power thrown about for the sake of nothing but proving you have it, that is offensive to everything she has ever been even at her darkest. And the academic bystanders are as culpable as the Jedi ever were. At least the Jedi occasionally condemned atrocities.

She wonders, briefly, whether Malak bothered to purge the Academy. That would at least be gentler on her ego. But Uthar and his apprentice take views of the Force, of the Dark Side and the Sith code, that are too familiar for Revan to be certain.

Yuthura is a vicious little snake, but she is intelligent, and alone of the minds Revan has felt since landing hers _resonates_ with something pure. She is here for the right reasons, she uses the Force in the way it was always meant to be used. She has claimed her birthright, broken her chains, and the Force burns in her as it did in the Mistress of the Star Forge a lifetime ago.

Revan _knows_ her in the way a master knows their apprentice at first sight, in the way a kyber crystal knows its master. Knows her like her own reflection. If there is hope for the Sith order, a guiding light, a future, Yuthura Ban is all it has. No one else has a hope of proving that the Sith Code can be used to make a better galaxy.

Casually, without thinking, the last hope of the Sith calls compassion her weakness.

In that moment, Korriban is a homecoming after all.

Any conflict, any second-guessing or contradiction, the restless uncertainty, is gone. Something long-forgotten snaps into place once more, and the Force burns like starfire in her veins.

Compassion, Revan wants to tell her, could have been the Sith Code entire.

What is compassion but the ultimate expression of strength, of command of the Force? To see suffering and be able to say: _No. Not with my knowledge. Not while I am here._ Compassion is not even empathy, it is _drive._ Simply the bone-deep urging to do something, to help. What was Revan’s rise driven by, if not compassion set aflame? Compassion is defiance, rejection of the status quo, it is nearly a form of madness.

Any weakling, any coward can end a life; free a slave, cut through the red tape to get a sick child the medical care she needs, halt a genocide, and you can _give_ it. You can alter the course of the galaxy, force the very universe to change simply by saying _no, I will not allow this. This life does not end here._ Then you can call yourself a master of the Force. _Then_ you can claim power.

Yet for all their pretty words the Sith have only ever been reactionary. The Sith code is merely an angry rejection of the Jedi. Furious and frustrated, they relish anything they know the Jedi hate; it is a child’s injured rebellion, and that is the furthest thing from freedom or strength of will.

They could have healed. Revan could have healed. But their wounded pride was too much, and the Jedi had hurt them too badly. They couldn’t let that old pain go. And so rather than walk away and have the revenge of living a better code, they stayed bound to that old pain, consumed by it. Rather than build something greater, they dedicated themselves solely to tearing down what they could no longer bear to be a part of.

Revan cannot hold them in disdain when she fell into the same trap once; but she pities them, those ancients who thought they had freed themselves.

The true tragedy of the Sith order is this: It never had to be this way.

These people know only obedience and rigid authority, and those are anathema to everything the Code should have required. No true Sith should care about dusty tomes or what mentors say is expected of them, about the judgement of their peers for perceived weakness. They could have taken power from their own passions, their own priorities and values, and forged them into strength and drive; and their victories too could be their own—however they choose themselves to define victory. No Sith should stand in judgement before anything but their own conscience.

But that has never been the case. Selfishness, the prizing of personal power over all else, has been a central tenet of the Sith order since its founding. There is too much blood and cruelty soaked into the very foundations of the Sith code, too much history giving the lie to any promise their code might have held. If there is to be any philosophy founded on true compassion, it has been many thousands of years since there was any chance that order might be Sith.

Revan left the Jedi because they had stagnated. They had abandoned innocents to their fate in order to lament over the glories of an ancient past, and claimed they had no choice. There is always a choice.

She had used those exact words once, standing in front of the Council. _There is always a choice._ And she had chosen to walk away. This, too, is the only code worth following.

Revan left the Jedi because they had lost their way, neglected the spirit of their own creed.

The Sith have earned no better.

* * *

There is always a choice, and whatever their doubts or noble intentions those who swear themselves to the Sith doctrine have made the wrong one.

But Revan, too, has a choice, and these children—angry, frightened, wanting control in a universe that has made them feel helpless—are not the only ones who should have known better.

Carefully, quietly, she finds those who are willing to step back from the precipice. Willing to make a choice again.

* * *

It takes more than distance to break a Force bond.

She tries. She does what she can. Meditates, alone in her quarters on the Ebon Hawk, focusing on the faint connection to Bastila. The Force is merciful when it can be; it shields her from Bastila’s pain, if not the knowledge of it.

Revan knows Malak’s methods. He learned half of them from her.

There is too much space between them for anything as sophisticated as communication, or even empathy. Only the faintest of impressions has any chance of being transferred.

 _I have not left you,_ Revan thinks. For the first time in her life she pleads with the Force for its help. _We’re coming. You’re not alone._

She wants to say: _He’s lying to you._

But she taught Malak how to turn an enemy, and he learned well. Lies are easy to reject. You break a Jedi by telling them the truth.

* * *

Revan, to put it mildly, has had a few things on her mind recently.

She probably still should have remembered to warn Carth that the ship would crash as soon as they dropped out of hyperspace.

* * *

Revan remembers the Rakata, and they remember her. The latter proves to be something of a problem.

But this is still her sphere. Call it diplomacy, call it empire-building, this is what has always set Revan apart.

So she divides up teams, assigns watch shifts. She bows to the One and the Elders and never quite lies, even if she is rarely entirely truthful. And maybe, if she were at her best, if she had the full trust of her crew, things might have been different. Maybe if she were less distracted, if she could focus entirely on the Rakata, if she had been more aware, faster in the Force…

But her efforts are not enough. This is a civil war she cannot end. She tries. She fails, She tells herself not to see it as an omen.

It feels an empty victory, but she earns her way into the Temple.

She can’t help but smile slightly as she senses Juhani’s agitation from much closer than it should ever have been.

Jolee claims he had a vision, of course. It may even be true; Revan is more inclined to believe that Juhani is simply not capable of watching her leave alone. She’s made so much progress—the work begun by Revan has been continued by the old man, and they’ve formed a weird sort of friendship. She’s going to recover, one of these days. She’s going to heal.

Most of the old hero-worship has faded, now, as Juhani rediscovers her own sense of worth. But she still respects Revan, and Revan is far from surprised that she wants to help. She tries to dissuade them both.

She doesn’t lie; truly, she wants to respect the Rakata, who have already shown a great deal of faith in her that she has not earned. The second reason, however, is one none of them are tactless enough to state out loud.

Juhani senses only danger; Jolee, more patient, stronger in the Force, a better listener, once more meets Revan’s gaze with that silent focus that says he knows everything she will not say.

But Revan has a Force bond. She has known since the moment they broke Rakatan orbit what is waiting for them on that Temple summit.

* * *

 _The Council tried to enslave you._ Bastila is a supernova in the Force. The wild, uncontrollable fury of a young woman who has only just learned how to feel anger at all and now has no way to stop it.

 _Yes,_ says Revan, because Bastila has earned honesty from her.

The pain is still raw, an open wound, searing crimson and gold as Bastila burns like a solar flare.

 _They taught us to fear the Dark Side as a means of control,_ she spits. She calls them hypocrites.

Quietly, Revan agrees.

Bastila’s fingers clench around her altered saber. _I feel anger,_ she says. _I feel pain. Acknowledging those emotions was liberation, not a failure._

Revan responds: _You should never have had to deny them._

Bastila’s eyes light up even as she bares her teeth. _The Council_ _are the ones who_ _denied them to me. My emotions are mine by right._

_They gave me the responsibilities of a Master and the respect of a child._

_They were happy to take advantage of my power so long as I was never less than perfectly obedient._

Pain flickers in her eyes.

 _I trusted them,_ she says. _And they_ used _me._

Softly, gently, Revan says: _I know._

* * *

“Join me,” says Bastila, and it is equal parts plea and command. She does not know how to be without a master. She offers Revan the world at her feet with a devotion that borders on manic.

The Force was never meant to make a slave of Bastila Shan.

Revan is grimly aware, as violet locks with pulsing red, that she is begging the universe to take back everything she ever demanded from it.

* * *

There is an eerie calm in the Ebon Hawk’s main room.

Bastila will find her again. That is as sure in the Force as that in the end, Malak was always destined to face Revan across a bladelock. She cannot allow herself to plan further for either inevitability. Perhaps the Jedi taught her something worthwhile after all; Revan has always been able to plan with ruthless pragmatism.

Malak must be stopped—here, today. The Sith chain of command must be dismantled. The Star Forge, that work of beauty and evil that Revan had once believed she could control, must die.

These things are her responsibility.

She does not plan her strike team without difficulty. But some decisions are certain, simple: Carth has to be ready to fly them out. Mission is worse than cannon fodder in close combat against Force-users. T3 can’t climb stairs. And she cannot, _will_ not, expose Juhani to the heart of the Star Forge.

There is another consideration. Ostensibly Jolee is staying behind because his saber skills are “a bit rusty”, because here where there is time and space for triage one more healer may make a real difference. It may seem foolish, to face Malak’s forces with neither Jedi at her side; but this is not about the Jedi versus the Sith. This is not the next step in their blood feud. Revan does not abandon her commitments, and there are jobs that are still undone.

This is one of them.

“Whatever happens,” Revan tells the old man, “You don’t let Vandar near Juhani.”

Jolee’s bushy eyebrows almost levitate off his face. After a moment he gives an aggrieved nod, muttering under his breath about how he’s too old for this mentoring crap. Revan doesn’t bother hiding her smile.

She’s accepted that she might die. Oh, Malak won’t kill her, she’s not being ridiculous; she’s just not taking on faith that she’ll get off the Star Forge before the Republic gets in a lucky shot and starts a cascade failure.

In the end she takes Canderous, because she needs a Mandalorian on her side; and HK-47, because it would break his heart to be left behind.

Anyway, it will annoy Malak.

She ignites her saber, takes a deep breath, and releases her mental shields.

She wants Malak to know she’s coming.

She wants Bastila to know it, too.

* * *

If they’d had more time, it might never have gone this far.

There is no time for the long, intricate discussions of ethics, of philosophy, that would have given Bastila a route away from the Jedi other than the one Malak offered her. There is no time for Revan’s favorite method, that of standing quietly and asking innocent questions until her opponent’s arguments collapse in on themselves.

There will be no time to talk Malak down, and Revan regrets that. He never listened to her, but he trusted her once. Perhaps it is her fault he lost that faith.

But Bastila, Bastila at least is still listening. It’s freedom she wanted, not raw power. Not the galaxy at her feet. All she ever wanted to own was herself.

Revan offers her that.

 _It doesn’t have to be this way,_ she says.

Bastila doesn’t believe her, Malak has done his work too well. She sees only one path forward; she does not want to take it, but she will not go back. And so she has no escape, no other choices. If she cannot be Jedi, she must be Sith.

And relief rushes through the blood and blackness of the Star Forge like daybreak, just for a moment, as Revan feels them slide back into harmony.

She smiles, and says: _There’s always a choice._


End file.
